Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, legal aid must provide access to justice in criminal, civil and family cases. A disproportionate amount is spent on a small number of high-cost criminal cases. That money needs to be spread more evenly across all categories of case, civil, criminal and family, so as to ensure access to justice and fair remuneration for practitioners. I have asked my noble friend Lord Carter of Coles to develop a package of reforms. He will report early next year.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, over the past eight years the amount of money spent on criminal legal aid has gone up from about £750 million to £1.2 billion. The problem is not the amount of money being spent on criminal legal aid, but how it is distributed among practitioners; the problem is not in relation to the quality of cover given to defendants, but unfairness and disproportionate amounts of expenditure on those very big cases. We need to redistribute the money, not just to the more normal-sized criminal cases, but also to civil aid. Where I am most concerned about lawyers leaving is not in relation to criminal legal aid but in relation to civil legal aid. Very few new practitioners come into that field, and there too many areas where people cannot get proper advice.

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, the Government are aware of that gap and the concerns that have been expressed, and we are keen to work with the pensions industry to find ways to ensure that consumers are provided with advice for making decisions about investing in SIPPs. Guidance is already available on the FSA and HMRC websites, but I should stress that these investments are not a new class of privileged investments for pension schemes. Most pension schemes already have these investment opportunities. Some 15 million people are already in schemes that are covered by them, but there has been a great deal of unjustified hype about these proposals and we think that, for many people, putting such assets into SIPPS would be inappropriate.

Lord Barnett: My Lords, I declare an interest as having benefited from the major tax relief available for annuities, but does my noble friend accept that the major problem with all change to pension laws is constant change? Does he accept that the case for a general pension reform, including SIPPS—and there is a major case for that—would be possible only if there was all-party agreement? Will he therefore rule out the possibility of seeking to deal with this on a party political basis and seek that agreement?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I do not believe that the response is complacent. As the noble Lord has highlighted, part of the problem is that this has been built up in parts of the press although from my more recent reading of some of the financial press there is a more effective and sober assessment of what these things entail. The reality is that if people put these assets into a pension scheme they are taking away from their own individual ownership at the moment. If there is use of things such as second homes, there will be a tax charge on people using it unless a full rent is paid for doing so.
	These are some of the matters which have not been properly explained in the press and it is important that we continue to make people aware of that in whatever way we can which is why these consequences have been set out on the website of the HMRC and the FSA. But the Government are working with SIPP providers to ensure that consumers are protected as fully as they can be. The gap is unfortunate but we need to make sure that, if there is going to be regulation, there is a proper process which is undertaken so that the regulation is effective. We cannot just put a regulation in place overnight and it is right that the FSA is given a proper opportunity to consult on changes to its rule book so that when the regulation—which is not just about SIPPs but concerns the regime generally—comes into force it is effective and has wide support.

Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, so now we know, fame is not the spur to regulation, A-day is. The question that really ought to be asked is why will it have taken the Government 10 years to produce proper regulation of SIPPs?

Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, one could ask what regulation was in place before that? What the Government have gone through recently has been a major simplification of the tax regime, to make sure that there are common rules relating to investments and contributions that exist right across the piece. The Government have done their bit—it has been ignored by previous governments for far too long.

Lord Avebury: My Lords, the Minister will recall that at the IAEA board meeting of 24 September, five requirements were suggested to Iran for safeguards for the non-proliferation treaty. Has the EU3 had an opportunity of discussing those matters with the authorities in Iran, and with what result, or are we relying exclusively on the report which Mr El Baradei is to make to the board meeting next Thursday?
	Have any steps been taken to persuade Iran to resume the human rights dialogue with the EU which was supposed to have been held in September but which was then deferred to sine die?

Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, following a visit to the camps on the Iran/Iraq border, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Slynn of Hadley, put forward authoritative findings and called for the de-proscription of the Iranian resistance. Will the Minister tell the House what consideration is being given to the noble and learned Lord's recommendations? Does he not agree that it is a paradox that we recognise a state where, as the noble Baroness said, women and children are publicly executed and where the president has called for the wiping out of the state of Israel while we proscribe the democratic resistance that is seeking to build a civil society and a plural society inside Iran?

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: The amendment would ensure that the only people or organisations to which proof of one's registrable facts may be given will be those who reasonably require proof of one's identity.
	Noble Lords will recall from yesterday's debate that Clause 1 establishes the national identity register for the identity cards scheme. The facts must be registered compulsorily. The Government argue that that will provide a benefit because we can then prove our identity in a convenient manner.
	My amendment is eminently reasonable. What possible objection can the Government have to a requirement that only those who reasonably require proof should be entitled to ask for verification of identity? If the term "convenient method" in Clause 1(3)(a) means anything, surely it means convenient to the individual registered on the data base. Should it really also mean anybody else who decides he wants to ask for identity even when he does not have a bona fide reason for so doing? Surely not.
	The problem is that right from the start of what the Government refer to as a period of voluntary participation, an increasing number of people will think it necessary either to ask for proof of identity or think that they need to offer ID by way of validation to access their registrable facts. The pretext for demanding proof will be extended as time goes on. Opportunities for demanding proof of identity will multiply as the system becomes further embedded. We already know from debates here and in another place that there are concerns about validation creep. The amendment should help to guard against that happening. I beg to move.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I understand from Amendment No. 9 that the eminently reasonable noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, wants to ensure that no one is asked to produce an ID card unreasonably. However we can see no reason to be concerned about that. First, there is already a significant safeguard in Clause 18, which means that no one will be required to produce an ID card as the only method of proving identity until it has become a requirement to register and be issued with an ID card, or unless a requirement is imposed under Clause 15 in relation to public services or under another legislative power. Once it becomes a requirement to register and to hold an identity card, it is surely a matter for personal judgment rather than government regulation for an individual to decide whether it is reasonable in the circumstances to be asked to produce an identity card. The wording suggested in the amendment would be difficult to enforce, so I see little point in including it.
	The fact is that this limb of the statutory purposes for the national identity register is there to provide a convenient method for individuals to prove their identity. We think that individuals are the best judge of their own convenience. If there is no legal requirement to produce an identity card, it is surely for the individual to decide what is reasonable and what is not, just as people already decide for themselves whether they consider it reasonable if licensed premises require proof of age or even standards of dress to obtain entry. A bank or building society already requires proof of identity before a new account can be opened. Again, it will help in everyday transactions for people to be able to use identity cards to prove their identity.
	In the case of public services, any requirement to produce a card is governed by regulations made under Clause 15. Strict conditions apply to those regulations, which would require consultation with those likely to be affected, as well as parliamentary approval under the affirmative resolution procedure. The purpose of those regulations is not only the convenience of the individual by making it easier to prove identity but also the wider public interest in ensuring the efficient and effective provision of public services.
	The role of the new commissioner should be considered alongside the other safeguards. The newly created post of national identity scheme commissioner will have oversight of the whole scheme, including as set out in Clause 24(2)(d):
	"the uses to which ID cards are being put".
	If the commissioner believes that identity cards are being requested unreasonably, he can bring that to the attention of the Secretary of State and Parliament.
	So, although I understand the concerns of the noble Baroness, I hope that I have reassured the Committee that there are already adequate safeguards in place and that where the public interest is not engaged, we should essentially leave it to individuals to decide for themselves when they wish to produce an identity card. For that reason, I suggest to the noble Baroness that the amendment is unnecessary and invite her to withdraw it.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I wonder if I could ask a question of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, because I am not perfectly clear as to the impact of Amendment No. 9, which, as we know, adds to the subsection that there must be reasonable proof that the person requesting information needs it. As I see it, those who have given consent to banks and building societies, for example, to access the record of the individual who gave that consent, are obviously not required to give reasonable proof because consent has been given in advance. Therefore, is the amendment addressed to the police and public authorities who have rights under this Bill to have access to the register? If the answer to that is "yes", I wonder how that will work in practice and how, as a matter of day to day reality, a police force, for example, will be able to establish that it reasonably requires access.
	Finally—I hope that this is helping the Committee; it is certainly helping me—would the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, say that her laudable aim, and I absolutely see what she is getting at, be a touch better contended with in those parts of the Bill that give public authorities and so on, the right to access the register?

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: Perhaps it might assist the Committee if I respond to that now, since we are at Committee; it might inform further debate and the Minister may want to respond. I was going to address this issue in my winding-up speech. I think it is commonly misunderstood that this amendment might have that effect. I do not believe that it does and it certainly is not the intention. The intention is to make it clear, at the very beginning of the Bill, to every member of the public who will be compulsorily registered, what their rights are when they apply for a new passport or renew a passport. It is to give them security about whether they are able to refuse agreement or validation to be accessed; that very freedom that the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, has rightly wanted to focus on. I do not believe that my amendment has the negative results that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, believes. There is certainly scope for further amendments, later in the Bill, which may well reflect his concerns. I do not think mine cuts the Bill off at the knees.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: May I support my noble friend Lady Anelay, who said that this was a probing amendment, and probe a point that worries me in this context? We are reading about the provision of a convenient method for such individuals to prove registrable facts about themselves to others. The amendment would add,
	"others who reasonably require proof".
	The Bill is very broad, and when one goes to Schedule 1, paragraph 17—and I mentioned this yesterday—one sees that some of the things that can be registered include,
	"particulars of any other information obtained for ensuring that there is an accurate entry about that individual in the register".
	This means that, presumably, public officials will make inquiries, perhaps at the person's home, about who else is living with them and the circumstances in which they are living. It appears that all that can be written down and recorded in the register.
	It may well be that, in practice, those who want something from someone else—perhaps a mortgage or something less dramatic—find themselves forced to agree. However, if the words "who reasonably require proof" are added to the Bill, it will be a little easier to say, "No, you are asking for something that is unreasonable"; "You do not reasonably need this"; "I'm sorry you can't have it"; and "You can't legitimately refuse me a service if you don't get it". That would tie in with other discriminatory legislation that the Government are introducing. Could we have a little clarification about what I believe is a genuine worry in what is potentially a highly intrusive Bill?

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: First, I shall pick up two points made by my noble friend Lord Selsdon and by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lord Selsdon that we expect and understand that the Government intend to provide as secure a system as is humanly possible in a technological world in which we know the ground is shifting all the time. As humans, we are all trying to keep up with those changes. The noble Baroness referred on a couple of occasions to the improvements in the recording of biometrics. She said that she took part in Monday's trial, in which she found the recording of the colour of her eyes swift and straightforward.
	I recognise that things have moved on since I took part in the Government's helpful system of offering peers a chance to get their ID card registered with biometrics in Black Rod's Garden. I went there last summer—along with Andy Burnham by the sound of it, the Minister from another place—but my experience was not quite as fortuitous as his. The uplink collapsed twice during the process of that transfer of data. It took nearly 45 minutes to capture my data. I have problems with my fingerprints because over the years I learnt from my mother—a dressmaker—how to do dressmaking and I have obviously damaged some of my fingerprints. I also have what those who were trying to capture my facial biometrics called, "a bland facial structure". But I will live with that—I have no choice.
	I was told at the time that the technology was advancing and would continue to do so. We understand that the Government are trying to achieve the best and that technology is changing and will try to capture information and store it securely. But my noble friend Lord Northesk is right to direct us to the central question: how is that being done and what reassurances can the Government give us about the way in which they are going to set up secure systems?
	I appreciate that this is the beginning of a long debate in Committee and we will have the chance to refer to this but we will need to ensure that we do probe all these issues. All of us on this side of the House want to help the Government—the Minister may say that we always say we try and help them, but we genuinely want to help them here—to ensure that if they insist upon the national identity register as a way forward, it is the safest that it can possibly be for the people of this country to have such a vital range of information held upon them.
	The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, asked what happens if it goes wrong. Will the Government be held liable for damages? I raised the question briefly yesterday, and perhaps it will assist the Minister to know that I accepted then that there is a later amendment which is specifically targeted at this issue. I believe it is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, but it certainly comes from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I anticipate that the Government will give us a full answer at that stage.

Lord Lyell of Markyate: I am grateful for this amendment and the opportunity to probe this question. There are perfectly clear things in Clause 1(5), which are entitled to be recorded in the register, such as,
	"where he resides in the United Kingdom".
	That is fine. Of course, most of the people who apply for a card will give accurate information.
	But the likelihood, particularly among some sections of society that are more vulnerable or less aware of the importance of always telling the truth, is that some inaccurate, possibly mendacious, information will be given.
	My intention is simply to probe what will, and will not, be recorded on the register. I make clear immediately my belief that it is quite possible, if my understanding of the Bill is correct, that a number of vulnerable people will have recorded answers about where they were living that turn out to be untrue. Indeed, there may be a succession of them. Schedule 1(7) states:
	"The following may be recorded in the entry in the Register for an individual—".
	Sub-paragraph (a) refers to,
	"the information provided in connection with every application by him to be entered in the Register",
	and, leaving out the irrelevant words, sub-paragraph (d) refers to,
	"particulars of any other steps taken or information obtained . . . for ensuring that there is [an] . . . accurate entry about that individual in the Register".
	In other words, it may be recorded that a third party—probably a government official—has tried to check certain information. They may build up a picture of the individual who has made the application that shows that a good deal of the information given on separate occasions is either inconsistent or incorrect.
	I am not saying whether it is right or wrong that that information should be obtained and recorded. I want to know whether under the scheme of the Act it will be lawful to do so.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Can I assist as to why I do not, respectfully, agree? If we look at the totality of Clause 1(5), we have in relation to subsection 5(f) "residential statuses previously held by him," which are not necessarily referable to residences in the United Kingdom. If we then look at paragraph (i), there is, in terms of residence or any other information,
	"information recorded in the Register at his request".
	In relation to residence we have at paragraph (b),
	"where he resides in the United Kingdom".
	That could catch all places at which he resides. I think many of us have the advantage of having more than one home.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I take the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, very seriously. He is right to draw our attention to those words and paragraphs from the report of the Constitution Committee. The Government take these issues very seriously indeed and we are absolutely determined to ensure that, in bringing forward the Bill, we reach the high thresholds expected of us in the way the legislation and the scheme will work once established in law.
	We have debated this issue already in some of the earlier amendments. Clause 1 is at the heart of the identity card scheme. It establishes the national identity register and it sets out the statutory purposes for which the register is to be established and maintained. The amendment focuses on the security of the register but it is unnecessary. The security of the register, certainly in managerial terms—the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, referred to this issue—will be of paramount importance and, as such, does not need to be set out in primary legislation.
	Furthermore—this is a very important point—the Data Protection Act, and in particular the seventh data protection principle, imposes already a statutory obligation on us to ensure that the appropriate technical measures are taken in order to secure the safety of the register. That is spelt out very clearly in the seventh data protection principle and is also made clear in Section 4(4) of the Data Protection Act 1998, which states:
	"Subject to Section 27(1), it shall be the duty of a data controller to comply with the data protection principles in relation to all personal data with respect to which he is the data controller".
	So it is implicit already in legislation that we should comply with that principle. The amendment adds no more to that obligation.
	Perhaps I may go into some of the detail of the issues that have been raised—the question of hacking and so on. The national identity register is not physically connected to the Internet or any publicly available network. The security control procedures designed to connect the NIR to application handling and identity verification systems are some of the most sophisticated currently available. These safeguards are designed to provide a defence in depth, as we have heard before, through distributed security architecture and are considered unlikely to be vulnerable to external attack while under appropriate management, audit and security operating procedures.
	It should be noted that to date—I know we have made this point before but it is important that it should be recorded again—there has not been a single recorded security breach or compromise of a government database which is protected in the same manner as that designed to protect the national identity register. No applicant or card holder information is ever transmitted in a manner that could expose it to the risk of interception or compromise. An advanced cryptographic and intrusion prevention scheme has already been designed to protect the supporting NIR communications infrastructure as part of the overall security architecture of the scheme. All security features designed to protect the NIR and supporting communications infrastructure have been developed in conjunction with the GCHQ's Communications-Electronics Security Group. The CESG, as it is known, is the Government's national technical authority for information assurance.
	The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell referred to management issues. In essence, he drew our attention to the potential abuse that might occur by virtue of the activities of agency staff. The proposed scheme incorporates the design principle that no one individual can change details directly on the NIR. Verification service traffic is one way, and does not access the NIR directly.
	It should be noted and understood that the content of the NIR is never stored in a manner that would leave it exposed to the risk of data extraction. A small number of communication links serve the database. These links are all encrypted using high-grade cryptography. There is no PC access to the NIR, and only a small number of operations staff with the highest level of government security clearance will be responsible for managing the uploading of information to the core database.
	Additionally, Clause 31 creates the offence of tampering with the register. A person convicted on indictment can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison or a fine, or both, and on summary conviction to a prison sentence of up to 12 months. If we need reminding, employees would also be subject to normal employment law remedies. Disclosure would certainly amount to gross misconduct, and would be a dismissable offence by virtue of that.
	So only a small number of authorised members of agency staff would have access to the register. It will not be connected to the Internet, and outside bodies will not have access. This is a highly secure system. It is designed that way by all other government databases. We do not believe that this amendment aids or assists that. It is already implicit by virtue of the seventh principle of the Data Protection Act. Our argument is that this unnecessary amendment adds nothing to the Bill, nor will it add any further protection.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: Very well. I accept with some doubt that the noble Lord did not in fact mean that it would be adequate to put this in secondary legislation, because that was the clear implication of what he said.
	My second point is that he said there had been no leak from a similar government database. There is a first time for everything, and this database is larger and more sensitive than any other. I really do not accept what has been said. Leaks from government sources are all too frequent. The noble Lord may not take that too seriously but I am serious about it.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 140 and 274 in this group. I should make it clear that these are probing amendments, for which the reason will become clear. They were divided upon by my honourable and right honourable friends in another place on more than one occasion, but I do not seek to do so just at this stage.
	This group of amendments asks the Government to set out clearly the purposes that they intend to drive the setting up of the national identity register. Once there is clarity of purpose, manufacturers can design a card that is fit for that purpose. So, what do the Government see as the fundamental purpose of a card? Will it be an entitlement card for e-government services, a security card, or does it have some other primary use?
	In the debate leading up to the Bill and during the consultation process, the Government have claimed a variety of reasons for introducing the national identity register and ID cards. They include protecting us against terrorism, clamping down on social security fraud, tightening their grip on money laundering, reducing illegal immigration and reducing crime—although I note that at Second Reading on 31 October the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, at col. 13 of the Official Report referred specifically not to crime, but to "serious crime". But the Bill is very broad and refers simply to "crime". The list goes on and on. What the Government have not yet done, and I invite them to do tonight, is to state which of the purposes that they are pursuing is a priority, because different services and purposes demand different types of card and registration. The noble Baroness seemed to disagree with that and by this amendment I am giving her the opportunity to state why. The Government have not yet proved their case that their system of registration and ID cards will have all the beneficial results that they claim.
	The first three amendments invite the Government to state their priorities and I will run through those very briefly. Amendment No. 16 would change subsection (4) of Clause 1 which lists matters that all might be in the public interest. Taken individually or collectively they could all be for the public good: we all want our national security to be enhanced, crime to be detected or prevented, the laws and regulations concerning immigration to this country to be enforced and illegal working to be prevented and the rules relating to it to be enforced. Everbody wants the provision of public services to be maintained securely, efficiently and effectively, but it does not necessarily mean that this Bill is the right or the only way to achieve those outcomes. Our amendment tries to tighten the definition of the statutory purposes of the Bill.
	The Government's own Clause 1(4)(a) merely refers to national security. We say that national security should be described primarily in relation to terrorism. Our new subsection 1(c) confines the purpose to preventing or detecting serious crime instead of leaving it open to all crime. I am simply making the Bill read in the way that it appeared the Minister herself construed it at Second Reading.
	We then go on to the more challenging bit of our amendments—challenging to me, not to the Government I hasten to add—where we go on to define serious crime as one which gives rise to an offence triable only on indictment. I say my amendments are only probing because I realise that that amendment is seriously defective in respect of Scotland—I say that knowing that I have expert Scottish colleagues behind me as well as on the Benches opposite. I realise that that amendment would exclude serious fraud, serious theft and serious assault in Scotland from coming within the ambit of this provision. It is only there as a prompt to ask the Government to approach their definition of what crime is to be covered by this. I recognise that if I ever did seek to bring this back on Report I would certainly need to redraft the amendment.
	I invite the Minister to explain how extensively the Government anticipate the use of ID card tracking to be used by the police in their work. Will card production be required from motorists who have been stopped for speeding? Will they in any way act as a deterrent to burglars and if so, how? Will the Minister explain what impact she expects 1(4)(c) to have on the prevention of illegal immigration? Are there not better ways of achieving that, for example, by increasing immigration controls at points of entry?
	What is the Minister's response to the briefing by the Commission for Racial Equality on these matters? It is concerned that the Government's integration agenda may suffer as a consequence of this legislation and its effects. The CRE says that the impact on communities where there are high numbers of irregular migrants has not been considered, except to say that it is "beneficial" unsupported by evidence. The CRE states,
	"With regard to illegal immigration and access to public services, it appears that the Government can achieve its aims without Identity Card legislation. There are provisions within immigration legislation to ensure that migrants have certain documentation."
	The CRC also points out that the recent pilot scheme aimed at Sri Lanka was not an unqualified success. Its reason is not just that at seven, the number detected was low, but that if there were a full race equality impact assessment it would indicate whether there are other, more effective, alternatives. It feels that the problem at the moment is that the Government have not yet published a full assessment. Can the Government indicate today whether they intend to do so?
	Amendment No. 16 also inserts new subsection (4) (a) to define relevant public services. I beg to move.

Lord Mayhew of Twysden: I want to raise a small point to be introduced on the back of the important matters which have just been raised by my noble friend. It is a Committee point, the devil being in the detail and, as we all know, there are many mansions in the detail.
	The scheme of Clause 1 is to provide that registrable facts are to be able to be ascertained whenever that is necessary in the public interest. Subsection (4) states,
	"For the purposes of this Act something is necessary in the public interest if, and only if, it is—"
	and then there follows paragraphs (a) to (e). The interesting fact and one that is possibly productive of future difficulties, is that one sees that in paragraph (a) it is,
	"in the interests of national security".
	In paragraphs (b), (c) and (d) it is,
	"for the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime"
	and so on. In paragraph (e) it is,
	"for the single purpose of securing the efficient and effective provision of public services".
	I would not expect the Minister to provide an immediate answer as to what is the distinction between the purposes and the purpose or between either of them and the interest. But it just may give rise to difficulty later and it could possibly be considered whether that might not be tidied up in the interests of consistency.

The Earl of Erroll: I rise to make a couple of points. I notice that this amendment has left out the prevention of illegal working and I wonder whether that is a good idea. I understand that the IND or the ACID databases are up to a year behind on their updating and so therefore it may be quite difficult until things like that catch up. The problem is the interface with other Government databases. If we are relying on this information to decide whether someone can work or not then all the information needs to be up to date—not just the NIR information but that on other Government databases as well. It might be wise to leave some of those out of this at the moment so that we do not suddenly find that some poor people get a work permit but they cannot verify it online—or whatever method is required under the proposals—and cannot actually get work for six or nine months later. Or we have a fallback system in which case the entire thing is a load of nonsense anyway.
	The second point is that all this is about providing public services. As has been mentioned several times during Second Reading and elsewhere I know that the Home Office has been talking to the banking community about this being a wonderful thing for opening bank accounts. But why is opening a bank account a public service, or provision of a relevant public service? I presume it comes under the preventing or detecting of serious crime; in other words, it is all being thought of as anti-money laundering. But we know that the anti-money laundering provisions do not work at the moment: because I believe they caught £46 million laundered through London last year as opposed to the several billion pounds which is estimated to have actually been laundered? We know that it is all pretty ineffective anyway and could really be disposed of without making any impact on serious crime at all. I do not see how that provision is preventing or detecting serious crime.
	If we are to make proper use of the card maybe we should be widening the said provisions to include what citizens want. How we do that I am not sure, but if we are going to have this card we might as well make it useful. I have not really thought it out, but it is a useful way of opening up the debate on the matter.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I would like to follow up on the intervention made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, and ask the Minister—and I am sorry that I did not give notice of this gritty question but it has only come to me in the course of the debate—whether the provision in Clause 1(4)(b) and the similar provision in the amendment, paragraph (b), the definition of public interest vis-à-vis prevention or detection of crime or serious crime, haul in the huge extension of disclosure of information in relation to public authorities which were brought in by Section 17 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. Many of your Lordships will remember that we had heated debates on that section. I particularly remember that at the eleventh hour the order came down the corridor that the Conservatives were not to vote to delimit the effect of Section 17 to terrorism. I exempt the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, from that—she was furious about it. That was a huge extension of disclosure under our criminal law. My question is: does Section 17, and the extended disclosure which it gave in respect of a massive range of authorities and statutes, come within the ambit of Clause 1(4)(b)?

Lord Crickhowell: The noble Baroness makes a reasonable point about al-Qaeda operatives, but am I not right in thinking that in order to get the identity card that she wishes them to have, they will have to apply for a passport or a driving licence or apply to be on the register. It seems to me rather unlikely that any potential al-Qaeda bomber is going to do any of those things. So, until the whole thing becomes compulsory, which we are told will not be for some considerable time, there will be no impact on al-Qaeda operatives, will there?

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: It is not just obtaining new passports. It will now be necessary for new passports to contain biometric data. The ability for operatives to act improperly will continue. What we are seeking to do, appreciating the challenges with which we are now faced, is to set in train a method of dealing with this both in the short and the longer term, which we believe will be truly successful. The whole lead-in time, as I have said on a number of occasions, will enable us, first, to establish the passports, as they currently are, under a voluntary scheme and then to ensure that the scheme has the integrity and soundness we will need before we make it compulsory. We will go through those stages. But, we see this as a current and long-term need. The sad truth is that we do not believe that the difficulties with which we are currently faced will simply evaporate in a year or two and make all this unnecessary. That is not the reality of the world in which we currently live. That is why I mentioned the issues in relation to GCHQ, which are set out in legislation, and the fact that this is a real issue for us.
	The second effect of the amendments would be to limit the usefulness to the police of the national identity register and the introduction of the identity cards by changing the reference from "crime" to "serious crime" and defining that to mean an indictable offence. We have dealt with why that will not be helpful. I see the noble Baroness nodding her assent to that fact. The reason we jointly—if I can take the noble Baroness's assent to that—would not think it wise to limit the use of the scheme in this way is that the public would think it very odd indeed if we seemed to be tying the hands of the police by limiting the use of the identity card scheme to serious crime.
	The noble Baroness referred to what I said at Second Reading—I think at col. 13 of Hansard. What I said then was quite right because it related to the provision of information from the audit log, which is set out in paragraph 9 of Schedule 1. I remind her of that. I have the extract here, but I am sure that if she reads it again she will see what I was trying to express in relation to that.
	The definition "serious crime" would be very unhelpful. Combating serious crime is a priority, but everyone must accept that the ordinary man or woman is as much affected by lower levels of crime and will expect us to provide the police with the tools they need, including a national identity card scheme, to combat that crime.
	The use of the phrase
	"giving rise to an offence triable only on indictment"
	would limit the use of the register and, we believe, simply not work. We already have a serious crime threshold, at Clause 20(4). That is for quite a different purpose. It is to provide extra protection to the provision of information from the register to the police about the records of provision of information at paragraph 9 of Schedule 1. That, as I said earlier, relates to the audit log of where and when a check of an identity card has been made against the register. I accept that that information should be given a much higher threshold, whereas it would not make sense for the provision of basic information to be subject to a "serious" crime threshold. The noble Baroness is right to try to make that division, but that is where we think it should be.
	The third point is that the amendment would limit the public interest in relation to terrorism and crime to assisting the Secretary of State to combat them. Of course the Secretary of State has a most important role to play in these matters. However, primary responsibility for fighting crime and terrorism lies with the police and the security services. It would be artificial and unhelpful to limit the definition to information,
	"of assistance to the Secretary of State".
	The fourth point relates to the change to the reference to immigration and the deletion of the reference to the enforcement of prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment. That point was raised by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. While the use of the scheme to combat illegal working in breach of immigration controls would to some extent still be covered by the reference to immigration controls, I do not think that it would be helpful to make that change. The use of identity cards to combat illegal working should be spelt out explicitly in the Bill. I know that illegal working has in the past been an issue with which the noble Baroness has been very concerned to stop because of the abuse that it involves—often the abuse of human rights. I know that the noble Baroness has a degree of passion on that subject.
	Removing that reference would not help employers and employees to recognise the importance of that aspect of the identity cards scheme. It would also limit artificially the use of the scheme to illegal working in relation to immigration control. There are other sorts of unlawful working, and identity cards would help employers properly to identify their prospective employees as a way of combating under-age working, and would ensure that tax and national insurance deductions are correctly allocated.
	The fifth point relates to the definition of public services, which in the amendment would limit the scheme to health, housing, education and social benefits. I have no problem with the list of public services in the amendment. Our concern is that it would limit the scheme unnecessarily if we were unable to show on the face of the Bill that one purpose of the ID cards scheme is to help the efficient and effective delivery of all public services. That is what the taxpayer and, indeed, the citizen expects. There are many other public services for which the use of identity cards to confirm someone's identity would provide benefits all round, for example, when applying for a criminal records check for someone working with children or vulnerable adults, or when anyone applies for a driving licence. It would be wrong to limit the scope of the scheme in the way proposed by the amendment.
	We also believe that when identity cards are used to access public services, it would be much better to rely on the existing checks in the Bill. Clauses 15 and 16 mean that any regulation requiring an identity card to be produced to access a public service would be subject to public consultation followed by an affirmative resolution order. By restricting the statutory purposes of the scheme we risk restricting the usefulness of the identity card.
	The noble Baroness asked about the race equality impact assessment. We published a full assessment on 25 May this year when the Bill was first introduced in the other place. We sent a copy to the CRE, and have offered to discuss it with the commission. We believe that many benefits will flow to all citizens in the community because service providers will be bound by the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2002. It is intended to establish an accreditation scheme so that only those private sector organisations that have been approved can run the checks, and the other issues that have been put in place will greatly assist.
	The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, again raised the issue of bank accounts. Opening a bank account is not a public service. A private organisation will be within the definition only if it is a public authority under the Human Rights Act, which is an organisation that performs public functions. The benefits to the private sector are encapsulated in the first limb of the statutory purpose in Clause 1(3)(a) referring to the convenience to the individual.
	Clause 14 controls provision of information to the private sector with the consent of the individual. Much of the debate yesterday was about consent, when and how it would be given, and so on. The important point is that consent will be necessary. We need to bear in mind the fact that, when someone currently opens a bank account, the bank is entitled to ask for various kinds of information to be produced to verify the person's identity. Quite often a passport and a series of other things are asked for. Banks ask for proof of identity. We believe that the ability to produce an identity card, which has someone's biometric data and a clearer means of identification, will assist in that regard. That is helpful and proper.
	I hope that I have managed to answer all the questions that were raised on the amendment. I understand that it was probing, but if there are other issues that the noble Baroness would like to explore, I shall be more than happy to write to her. I think that we have covered all the bases.

The Earl of Erroll: The noble Baroness mentioned that the measure would prevent illegal under-age working among immigrants. She should be aware that apparently there is a disparity between the ages of those registered on the Home Office unaccompanied asylum-seeking children data base and the same people registered with local authorities. Those complications will come out in real life, and we must be careful how we handle them.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: The amendment inserts into Clause 1(4) (b) the single word "serious" so that, in defining what is in the public interest for the purposes of Clause 1, which delimits the whole extent of the measure, we are concerned only with purposes of preventing or detecting serious crime. On the previous amendment, we have already had quite a bit of debate about that notion. I listened carefully to what the noble Baroness said and will think more about it. In legislation such as this, we are always in the business of drawing lines. She made the point that she felt that the line delimited by the definition of serious crime in the amendment was too far.
	On the other hand, to have no limit as to what crime engages those important and potentially intrusive powers is seriously inadequate. One could have an officious police force using a parking offence or not having a TV licence as entitlement to access the national register. They are both crimes. More seriously, in a public demonstration, the police could claim that there was the possibility of public order offences and claim to be entitled, under the provision of preventing crime, to go around photographing everyone on the demonstration and performing a facial match with the national register. Those examples may sound far-fetched, but who knows. As I have said many times, in this Bill we should not take chances with civil liberties.
	For my part, I am of the view, and so are my colleagues on these Benches, that we need a threshold beneath which the provisions of the Bill do not bite and above which they do. Hence my insertion of the word "serious". The definition of the word that I suggest in my amendment is that of the Bill itself. The noble Baroness referred to Clause 20(4). That refers us to Clause 43, which, in turn, defines serious crime—because it is used in another clause—by reference to the Regulation and Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Sections 81 to 83. For the benefit of the Committee, serious crime in the Bill therefore means crime that is either violent, involves substantial financial gain, or involves a large number of people in pursuit of a common purpose, where, were they convicted, they would expect a sentence of three years' imprisonment or more—on the basis that they had no previous convictions. That is the definition in the Bill and it is a substantial threshold to provide.
	However, we cannot just think of the convenience of the police in contemplating the amendment and the clause. There are hearts and minds issues in the Bill that those of us who are worried about them have tried to explain. We are especially concerned with ethnic minority groups and how they may be targeted if the Bill is too lax. I mentioned briefly before that it was a failure to have some such limitation in Section 17 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. That has left it in what everyone whom I know who is aware of it considers to be a parlous condition. I will leave it at that; we have already had a bit of a discussion on the matter; and look forward to hearing what the Minister and other Members of the Committee have to say. I beg to move.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My amendment would not be the three-year serious crime provision. If one of the other limbs catches the offence then it is caught, full-stop. That includes the provisions in the Bill. As the noble Baroness says, I do not intend to pursue the matter now.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: The amendment stands in the name of my noble friend Lady Seccombe, among others. In a debate on a previous amendment the Minister was kind enough to refer to what she called my "passion" to ensure that the appalling conditions people suffer in illegal working should not be allowed to continue. The amendment would ensure that any measures introduced with the objective of reducing, or altogether eliminating, illegal employment are done in a proportionate way, and that other methods should not be jeopardised as a result.
	I hope it will be for the convenience of the Committee if I say that I have told the Front Benches that I will not seek to move Amendments No. 19 and 20 tonight. I believe that they would duplicate much of the debate that has taken place over the last couple of days, particularly today, on hacking. It might be better to look at a more focused amendment on Report.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: We have already had quite a debate on this and I will try to keep my comments brief. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, would remove the deletion of the reference to the enforcement provision prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment. While the use of the scheme to combat illegal working in breach of immigration controls would, to some extent, be covered by the reference to immigration controls in any event, we take the view that it would not be at all helpful to make this change. My noble friend Lady Corston made a very useful intervention on that point.
	Bona fide employers will want to know exactly who is working for them. And once the scheme is in place, the identity card will be the easiest way to check a prospective employee's identity and to ensure that, if a foreign national, he or she is entitled to work in this country. It will offer a further measure of protection to employers. It is worth saying that employers have, in the past, expressed the view that the measures they face in relation to illegal working have presented something of a burden to them. This will help them to work though that burden, if burden it be. We think it is a quite proper measure.
	The use of identity cards to combat illegal working should be spelt out explicitly on the face of the Bill. For example, paragraph (d) would also cover employment laws unrelated to immigration, such as prohibitions or underage working. Again, we think that that is a benefit. Where people are forced into employment for less than the minimum wage, it will help enforce the law, and has value for that reason.
	I believe that we should not limit the public interest test, as set out in the amendment. For the reasons that my noble friend Lady Corston and I have made plain—and which the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay probably agrees with—I think the noble Lord should withdraw the amendment.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: When I introduced our first amendment yesterday, I did not anticipate that it would lead to such an early furore on the issue of this scheme's cost. Noble Lords from both sides of the House soon seized upon the importance of that. Amendment No. 21 remains on the list only so that I can indicate publicly the kind of questions I hope the Government might be able to address more effectively by the time we get to Report. It is, therefore, very firmly in the nature of a probing amendment.
	It is important that the Government should be able to demonstrate clearly that the cost of the establishment and maintenance of the identity register and the ID card system are proportionate to the alleged benefits to be realised by the better control and detection of fraud in the public services, and the better delivery of those services to all. The Minister referred to the KPMG report, a concise version of which has been placed in the Library. She will have realised yesterday that we feel it would be appropriate if, before we reach this full debate on Report, further information could be made available, so that a proper assessment of the Government's position may be made.
	There was a certain amount of disarray on the Government Front Bench yesterday about the real figures for costs. I do not attach any blame for that disarray to the Minister. I attach it firmly to the Cabinet that has, as yet, not properly worked out the cost of the scheme or has done so and not seen fit to let those costs be known. I make no judgement on that; I simply wish to take part, in Committee, in a further examination of what the real costs are.
	Last week, I chaired an all-party meeting at which the two speakers were Mr Simon Davis, referred to earlier today by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, and the Minister who has responsibility for the Bill in another place, Mr Andy Burnham. I understand that that was one of a series of hustings that they have attended. I was grateful to both of them for so clearly putting forward their relative cases to an audience of predominantly information technology experts. There were also several Peers there, representing both sides of the House.
	What concerned me most during the course of that presentation was the feeling that Mr Davis was beginning to move closer to what he thought the Home Office figures were, only to find that Mr Burnham, during the course of questioning, volunteered the plea that we should not take into account the integration costs because these would not fall upon the Home Office budget. That left the meeting somewhat open-mouthed; we need to look not only at the impact upon the Home Office budget when determining proportionality and cost-benefit analysis but also at the impact upon the budget of all departments, because that may have an impact on tax paid by individuals.
	Therefore, if a proportionate benefit is not achieved—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was rightly interested to ensure that that benefit is taken into account—or if benefits outweigh the costs, one could say, "It's all fine and dandy to say that £30 will be the cost of an ID card if you don't have a passport and £93 will be the cost with a passport"—if those are the correct figures. However, that would be no use to individuals if the real costs of provision of the whole system were somehow loaded on to other departments and had to be borne by the taxpayer in other ways. That is a problem at the moment.
	I will certainly not go into the kind of detail I had intended because that would merely repeat some of the snippets of yesterday's debate. However, it is important that the Government carefully take into account points made yesterday from all parts of the Committee.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: It might be for the convenience of the House if we move on to the next business. I therefore beg to move that the House be resumed. In doing so, I propose that we re-convene to further consider the Bill in Committee no later than 8.30 pm.

Lord Harrison: rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what further action they will take to implement the 2004 music manifesto, aimed at delivering musical opportunities for young people.
	My Lords, I was lucky. I was taught at school to sing, to dance, to play the cello, and so developed a deep and abiding love of music. I profited from inspiring music teachers, including Mr—later Professor—J F Paynter, whose school production of "Dido and Aeneas" included me, warbling in the alto register and improbably dressed as one of Dido's huntresses. Even today—at bus stops, bowling greens and in the bath—I intone, now with basso profundo, to those in astonished earshot tunes from Purcell's baroque masterpiece. Later, as a student, with a guitar, I hitch-hiked on the Continent and developed an enduring respect for Europe's history, culture, politics and music. Indeed, language and music were my ever-handy passports.
	I was one of the lucky few, but what of young people today? Do they enjoy the same flying start that I had? Publication of the music manifesto and its recent follow up—report No. 1—provide an opportunity to assess whether its five stated aims and three proposed core work programmes will catch the ear of today's young.
	At the outset, may I thank all those who will be speaking today, so many of whom have been intimately involved with the manifesto, and the Minister, who has announced even this morning the £2 million to be made available to the Pathfinder's programme of the music manifesto? I congratulate the Government's bold initiative in bringing together such disparate stakeholders, which has been a stunning success. The 60 original signatories have already risen to an impressive army of 360. That my remarks today will concentrate on the unfinished agenda of the manifesto in no way detracts from its auspicious start and my admiration for it.
	To most of us, music is indeed a second mother tongue. As such, it is best learnt early. Indeed, we are told that the first organ to fully develop in the womb is the ear. But, in today's general art scene, it is in the pre-school years that the growing child is least well served, including in respect of music appreciation. Only one in five of our established arts organisations makes any kind of provision for under-fives. This cannot be right.
	As for primary and secondary school music provision, too many music lessons take place in classes unfit for purpose. Music is deemed a peripheral subject and is consigned, inappropriately, to the schools' peripheral areas. The Government's active PFI building programme has made great strides, but more needs to be done to locate music in its proper teaching environment and to overcome the practical problems with which music staff deal on a daily basis?
	On a more optimistic note, can the Minister elaborate on the opportunities for children's formal and informal music education if the proposed eight-to-six school day is indeed introduced? Will my noble friend also tackle head on the fears that any proposal to diminish the role of LEAs in school music provision will have, necessarily co-ordinated on an authority-wide basis.
	On a brighter note, will the Minister report on the successful gold pilot schemes in 13 authorities in the Wider Opportunities initiative promoting first access to music? Will this scheme be made available to other LEAs, and if so, when? With regard to the central issue of financing the music manifesto, will my noble friend spell out transparently what resources the Government believe are needed to fulfil the aims of the manifesto, and how much new money has been set aside for these purposes?
	How do the Government rebut the rebuke of authorities such as Rochdale, who underscore the fact that the recent welcome extra provision of £10,000 for LEAs scarcely allows for the appointment of half a music teacher? Nor does this respond to the QCA's complaint that some authorities set aside fewer than 10 minutes of their timetable for music education. Is the lack of finance the root cause of our failure to implement David Blunkett's 2001 pledge later in the White Paper to provide every primary school child with access to instrumental tuition? Will my noble friend report on Scotland, where I understand the Scottish Executive have pledged £17.5 million to fulfil that very same purpose by 2006?
	The mention of teaching leads me to music teachers, the sine qua non of music education. Interestingly, music teachers are often those who most embody the ideal of the dedicated and devoted schoolteacher, despite the besetting challenges of teaching music in many of our schools. Indeed, like a headteacher, the enthusiastic music teacher has the power to transform music into the most vibrant and most loved subject in the whole school—so much so that I characterise music as the beneficial Trojan horse of school education, in its capacity to inspire learning in the sometimes reluctant child. Heads should cherish and deploy those music teachers, because of their power to persuade and cajole the growing pupil in a way that eludes teachers in other disciplines.
	What more can the Government do to enhance the role, career path, pay and conditions of music teachers, and to aid and abet non-specialists assigned to music-teaching tasks? If a core task of the music manifesto is indeed to recruit a vibrant workforce, can we afford to let formal teaching qualifications stand in the way of recruiting such music leaders? Will my noble friend comment on the exclusion from schools of those holding only music college teaching diplomas? What more could be done to entice into our schools those outside who possess considerable musical skills? Often retired or underemployed, they would willingly contribute to teaching if encouraged to pass on the baton of their musical knowledge. This silent army should be brought in to sing.
	Will the Minister also look at the postcode lottery of music tuition fees? Worcestershire, for example, charges £36 an hour, compared to neighbouring Herefordshire's £22. Are these not themselves a function of even greater disparities in the general funding of music in schools? Sheffield's budget of £1.15 per pupil looks very pale next to Manchester's munificent £13.75.
	As the music manifesto readily recognises, formal music education must be enhanced and complemented by initiatives for informal learning. I worry here too, though. I note, for instance, the closure of Reading University's music department; the £30 million shortfall accrued by several London orchestras; the decline of church music; and, dear to my heart, the loss of music and collections of music scores from our public libraries.
	This leads me on to the primacy of classical music as the bedrock of musical tradition. It holds a special, perhaps unique, place in our affections, but, as one who also celebrates many other forms of music, I suggest the dispute is sometimes rather sterile. Most forms of music have their own disciplines, and any one form may act as a window of perception through which the growing child enters the many mansions of music.
	In conclusion, I ask my noble friend to ensure that the music manifesto applies throughout Britain, in rural towns and areas as much as in metropolitan areas. I also ask him whether he is satisfied that policy-making for the future is grounded in enough facts and figures. Too often we rely on anecdote, and I hope he will feel it within his brief to be able to ask for research to be done in this area. In this way we can build upon what has been presented to us with the manifesto, whose bold and promising chords we celebrate in your Lordships' House tonight.

Lord Moser: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for giving us this all-too-rare opportunity to talk about the arts, let alone music. The tone of my remarks will be set by the German philosopher Nietzsche, who famously said—and I translate—"Life without music is a mistake". This is one mistake I have not made in my own life.
	In our own musical scene there is now much to be proud of, but not time to talk about. For a long time the worry has been music education, so I warmly welcome the music manifesto. At the beginning there was some concern about whether it was just words, but it has turned out to be much more than that, and to be part of what the Government have achieved to improve the situation—which the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has had so much responsibility for. The new report from the Manifesto Champion, Marc Jaffrey, is extremely impressive; full of passion, vision and facts. It does not skip facing the main issues.
	I want to remark on a particular project, in which I must declare an interest as its chairman, that points in exactly the same direction as the manifesto: the Paul Hamlyn Foundation project called Musical Futures. This is based on three pathfinder action research projects in Leeds, Nottingham and Hertfordshire, all aimed at finding innovative ways of widening opportunities for children ages between 11 and 12, within and outside schools. We are creating models, we hope, that can be followed throughout the country. I have great hope that this project, which is in conjunction with Youth Music, will make a major contribution.
	In welcoming the music manifesto, especially the way it will change public interest in, and attitudes towards, music and music education, I shall, however, in this short speech, pick out the three priority areas on which I hope the manifesto will lead to government decisions. The noble Lord has already touched on these.
	Without doubt, the top priority is to improve the teaching of music in primary and secondary schools. It is not acceptable that some teachers who teach music cannot read music; nor that we are losing recruitment, even in the primary sector. Music teaching has to be improved, both in numbers and quality.
	Secondly, I refer to the situation in secondary schools. Primary schools have improved considerably in recent years in this regard, thanks partly to the Government. However, in secondary schools the situation remains fairly dire. Progress has been made in a number of schools and there are always good examples but it is not acceptable that only 8 per cent of children continue to study music after the age of 14 when compulsory music tuition ends. That is a sad reflection on the scene.
	I hope above all that the music manifesto, which is such a brave innovation on the Government's part, and is now well run by Marc Jaffrey, will not only be backed as a manifesto but that the Government will respond to the challenges that they have stressed. To my mind the top priorities to be tackled are teaching, secondary schools and the worry regarding local music services, on which much depends. I worry about the future of those services in view of what is going to happen to local authorities following the publication of the White Paper.
	In conclusion, the manifesto constitutes a campaign and is to be welcomed as such. All credit is due to the Government for launching and backing it. However, its real success will depend not only on whether it persuades the music world, comprising schools, conservatoires, orchestras and so on, to do even better but also on whether it persuades itself to do better. The manifesto is no substitute for taking brave and generous decisions on education, to which it points, and on the arts. There is much to worry about in the arts. There is still much underfunding, cuts in the Arts Council's grant and the latest, potentially crippling threat to orchestras if the Treasury's national insurance measure is imposed. In welcoming the Government's initiative in the form of the manifesto, we must remind all departments, including the Treasury, that a campaign is a means to an end and that the end is a strong and, I hope, generous government decision regarding the arts, including music.

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for introducing this debate on a very important subject. He puts some of us to shame with the assiduous way in which he pursues such issues. I should also declare an interest as a trustee of several organisations with music at their heart, in particular the Roundhouse, to which I think my noble friend the Minister may refer later, as it is one of the partners in the new Music Manifesto Pathfinders Programme which I believe he launched earlier today. We look forward to hearing more about that.
	I made my maiden speech in your Lordships' House almost exactly six years ago and I spoke on that occasion about my own early education, and how fortunate I had been in attending a school—a state-funded village school—where all the arts, and especially music, were a natural part of our daily lives. As a result, although I am a less than wholly competent musician, I have a lifelong—so far anyway—enthusiasm for music which was germinated in me at a very early stage, and I thank God, and whoever was responsible for providing it, every day.
	By the time my own children were growing up, the picture had changed. Music had slipped to the status of an "extra". Tuition in instrumental playing was either unavailable or provided only at very considerable expense and many children of my children's generation went through their whole school lives never making more than the most rudimentary acquaintance with an art form that was around them every day in shops, their homes, clubs and on radio and television. It is there, around us. However, they did not know anything about it other than whether they liked it or not, which is not a bad thing to know but it is not the whole story. That seems to me to have been a betrayal of a whole generation. Therefore, it is particularly gratifying to me to see that, finally, a combination of political commitment to the value of music education and the investment of serious money has begun to make a real difference. I absolutely take the point made by both previous speakers that resources are a serious issue, but none the less money has been made available. The introduction of the music manifesto was a really significant statement of intent from the Government, but delivery is always the tough bit. The report we are discussing shows that some progress has been made in the first year, and points the way forward to specific developments in the next phase of activity. I want to concentrate on one initiative that is particularly close to my heart.
	Your Lordships have already heard the noble Lord, Lord Moser, mention the organisation Youth Music, which is a delegate distributor of an annual £10 million of lottery funds. It aims to benefit children and young people with least access to musical opportunity—more than 1 million have so far been involved—mainly up to the age of 18, but sometimes beyond. Most of its activities take place outside school hours—which, as the report points out, is often crucial in getting young people to engage with musical activities. Youth Music is one of the most important of the many organisations through which the pledges in the Music Manifesto are being made good. Youth Music had already declared singing as one of its own priorities over the next five years because, as it points out, singing is the most easily accessible medium for music making. It can involve large numbers, it is a support for instrumental learning, it is a powerful means of expression and it is cheap. Youth Music has undertaken to lead work on the development of singing as one of the three new priority strands of work arising from the manifesto.
	Everyone can sing and pretty much everyone does. Even those who swear they are tone deaf—a dubious diagnosis in my view—will still venture a few notes in the bath or will sing along with the radio. Singing is something children do naturally from an early age, but they must have encouragement and support if they are to get real benefit and long-lasting enjoyment from it. They need confident, inspiring leaders; they need a stimulating and varied repertoire; and they need the opportunity to sing in a variety of styles, as my noble friend Lord Harrison pointed out. Boys, especially, need to be encouraged to keep on singing beyond the point when their voices break and not to see it as something "wussy" that they should not be doing. I look at the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, who chairs the parliament choir when I say that boys especially need to carry on singing if they are tenors.
	Grass roots participation by children and young people in communities as part of our upcoming Olympic celebrations is one of the ways in which we hope that more children and young people will become involved in music in the future. When my noble friend replies to the debate I hope he will assure us that Youth Music's resources, along with all the other organisations that need resources to deliver the manifesto commitments, will be maintained at least at their current value—I stress value rather than cash—so that the splendid work it is doing can be sustained.
	Will my noble friend also say something about what more the Government can do to encourage those responsible for training for training young musicians to extend the opportunities for students to contribute as broadly as possible to music education, and to see it as a vital extension to their range of skills rather than an admission of defeat? Much good work is already going on in colleges and conservatoires but more is necessary. I am sure that other noble Lords will touch on that point.
	I finish by commending to your Lordships the excellent piece in the report by the distinguished composer, Howard Goodall. I intended to quote from it at length but I do not have time. I will just say that he talks about the things which are important to have to get people to engage with music. One of them is enthusiasm. One of the things that is no good at all in terms of getting people to engage with music is indifference. For too long music was regarded with indifference by politicians. At last we have a Government who have put music firmly on the agenda. I salute that commitment. Long may it continue. I apologise for going over my time.

The Lord Bishop of Worcester: My Lords, I do not know whether I correctly interpret the look on the face of the noble Baroness on the Government Front Bench but I believe that she is concerned about the length of our speeches. It was very kind of her not to make that point strongly before a cleric rose to speak. I am grateful for that.
	I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, not only for initiating the debate but for delivering a speech of which my only criticism was that he did not sing it, which would have been much more to the point.
	At the risk of saying something that will be recognised by one of the noble Baronesses on the Benches opposite as having been said by me before in a different setting, the sight of young people attentive to their music, to their conductor and to the common activity of playing is inspiring in a way that almost nothing else is. We must be honest: we have been extremely short-sighted during a mechanistic period of education, in which the national curriculum, a concern with vocational education, making people more marketable and so on led to a downgrading of an area of learning, of education and of natural activity that, with hindsight, should have been given much greater importance.
	It is not even sensible, if economics and employability are our main concerns, because music is a very substantial part of our economic life. It is not even clever if we had been concerned to stop young people gravitating towards anti-social activity, because there is nothing calculated to draw them together in a focused manner more than music. It is not very clever to have reached a position where young people were spending more on music than on almost anything else, while liking school music least of all. I salute those who have come together with the Music Manifesto and with all that has followed from it in moving things on.
	If I may do something, which, if this were not the subject of the debate, I would call blowing my own trumpet—but I shall not—I would say that the Churches and the faith communities have had a real influence in this area down the centuries. There is nothing more important in relation to faith communities other than the Christian one that they should nourish and be put in touch with the musical inheritance that is basic to their culture.
	Regarding the balance and priorities of the curriculum, one of the difficulties that Church music faces is that, as we have experienced in Worcester recently, it is extremely difficult to encourage state schools to make children available for the time that it takes to train as choristers. You will not do that unless you change people's sense of the priority of music in the curriculum. That could be a significant fruit of this manifesto.
	Funding underlies much of what has been said. I am glad about any money that is made available for music. I salute it. I am delighted. But we must be clear that there has been a massive withdrawal of funds from this area—that is the real problem: the big money comes from prioritising music education in the budgets of schools. If schools are not in a position to do that due to other pressures on the curriculum, they will not do it. And if they do not do it, making bits and pieces of other money available will never compensate for the large tranche of money that has been withdrawn.
	So I salute the manifesto. I salute the speech with which this debate began, and the speeches that have followed. I would like the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, to know that I heard what he said about Worcestershire and I shall pursue it. One can learn about local things in debates such as this. I am glad that we are having this debate and I salute the Government's part in it, but I want the manifesto to be as widely owned and as well funded as possible. It gives young people a sense of their own self-transcendence and the possibility of achieving something by working with others in a close and focused activity that they have deep in their bones anyway.

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster: My Lords, I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, most warmly for giving us the opportunity to have this debate this evening. I must only apologise to him that I was not able to be here at the very beginning because of a speaking engagement outside which went on—through no fault of my own—longer than I had expected. It is very good to have this opportunity to debate the manifesto.
	When the manifesto first came out there were some people who thought that it was long on imaginative ideas and ambitious aspirations but notably short on whether, when and to what extent the Government's money would be where their mouth was. We have seen over the time since the manifesto was introduced that the funding worries are being relieved in some quarters. I hope that that progress will continue in the future.
	I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Moser that there is this great problem about music education in primary schools and a notable shortage of qualified music teachers. That is not a shortage which will quickly or easily be remedied but I would commend to the Minister the work of the Voices Foundation which is there to promote music and in particular singing in primary schools and has courses for teachers who are not qualified music teachers to equip them more fully to give their young pupils the kind of lead in music and singing that they need to have.
	The importance of music—and in particular of singing—for the young is not merely for their own delectation or improvement but, we have seen, for instance in the work that takes place in Bristol, how in a group of young people—mostly tearaways outside the school—can find, through the introduction to music and in singing together, a way in which their individual positive contribution can be merged into a communal effort. Music has a social value as well as a musical value.
	The manifesto states:
	"We are committed to broadening the range and skills of teachers . . . artists and other adults so that they are able to work more effectively as music leaders in schools."
	The Royal Northern College of Music, of which I have for one more week the honour to be the chairman of the board of governors, has been successful in winning its bid for a grant as a centre of excellence for teaching and learning. We are using that grant—which will continue for at least five years—to help the students at the college to go out into secondary schools in and around Manchester and gain experience in teaching young people and so we hope equip them the better to enter the profession if that is what they eventually decide to do. That has been a very notable and successful initiative and I warmly commend it and express our gratitude to the Government and to HEFCE for bringing it about.
	I finish by echoing what has been said about the value of music and music education. I have been singing all my life, coming as I do from a musical household and a musical family. I am afraid that I have been singing tenor for the last 65 years if the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, will allow me to mention that. I therefore speak from first-hand experience of the importance that music—and particularly singing—has had in my life, and I believe can have in the life of every young person in this country. As William Byrd said,
	"Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing".

Baroness Buscombe: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for introducing this important debate. All day, I have been smiling—for the simple reason that this time last evening I was at a packed Albert Hall listening to Jamie Cullum and his band. It was fantastic raw talent that traverses all the musical compartments of jazz, rock or salsa—you name it. It was an inspiration to us all, and he had also played to the hall full of schoolchildren that afternoon. Let us hope that some of them will now try to emulate Jamie in years to come.
	Will the manifesto make a difference to their chances? We all hope so, and my job this evening—in the five minutes that I am allowed to speak—is to urge the Government to ensure that it does.
	The manifesto has succeeded in raising the profile of music and it celebrates all the good music initiatives in place. I welcome the Government's announcement today to commit £2 million to the Hallé, the Roundhouse and the Sage, although, while the money is new, both the Halle and Sage have been doing wonderful work in this area as part of their core remit.
	The Pathfinder project seems very similar in approach to what is already happening within the BBC and the Arts Council creative hubs. Can the Minister assure us tonight that all these initiatives can and will connect for the common good and that all the hard work that Marc Jaffrey and his steering committee, Leonora Davies as chair of the Music Education Council, and many others are doing is turning the key to more training and the introduction of more teachers into our schools?
	There have been real concerns regarding a focus on how many individuals and organisations have signed up to the manifesto on the manifesto website rather than on what they are all actually doing. Here I think the Government have been clever for they have effectively drawn in many representatives of the music industry, musicians and arts groups. Once in, it is then very difficult for those who have signed up to complain or put real pressure on their partners, ergo the Government, to actually deliver.
	In searching for assurances I turn to the report No.1 of the manifesto, where I note that lots of young people are quoted saying what they would like. Further, for example on page 14 it states that,
	"within the next 10 years no child will leave school without having had access to high quality arts and culture"—
	and—
	"over time all pupils who want to will be able to learn a musical instrument".
	So there will be some musical activity within 10 years and learning an instrument over time. That sounds good but there is no tangible deadline to do more than introduce children at some stage, maybe only one stage, to music. Will the Minister state tonight what the manifesto is actually achieving in terms of outcomes? Can he be sure that more children are actually playing music in the classroom and beyond because of the manifesto?
	I note that further funding announcements are expected in the near future and I urge the Minister to ensure that there is a real drive to see that all the resources are focused upon a long-term sustained commitment to more regular music provision in schools.
	Taking this point further, my noble friend Lord Lloyd Webber, who sadly cannot be in his place this evening because he is, as we speak, preparing to open "The Women in White" on Broadway tonight, has asked me to express, on his behalf, the crucial importance of ensuring that monies earmarked for music services actually reach the right destination. Incidentally, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, spoke of the contribution of music to our creative economies. It is hard to think of a more inspirational example of sustained and creative musical talent that young people all over the world can aspire to than my noble friend. He has long campaigned for more teaching of music and musical instruments in schools and he has well documented experience, for example, of trying to track music standards funds that appear to have been used by a local authority for purposes other than music services. Is all the funding now ring-fenced and what assurances can the Minister give us that monies spent will be properly audited?
	The report No. 1 of the manifesto, together with all the speeches made earlier today and others in the past few years, have made great reading; and there is real activity. We appreciate the fundamental importance of music which should be central to our nation's life. I just want to be sure for the sake of all our children that all the initiatives, speeches and words mean that our children really will have what I and my old school friends—yes—took for granted. Here I differ from what the noble Lord, Lord Harrison said. He said that it was just the lucky few and that he was one of them. In those days, it was the norm. We took for granted but really enjoyed, in the maintained system, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, weekly music teaching for everyone through primary and secondary school—school orchestras, school choirs and musical instruments that come to life and breath energy and optimism. We want this for our children now, unlocking creative talent and bringing young people together.

Lord Adonis: My Lords, the House is very grateful to my noble friend Lord Harrison for giving us the chance to discuss the music manifesto this evening and, indeed, for me to be reminded of my writings in the Financial Times of more than 14 years ago.
	My noble friend and other speakers made some very complimentary remarks about the manifesto. Let me say at the outset that those compliments should be entirely directed at my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley and my colleague David Miliband, who together conceived, launched and nurtured the Music Manifesto last year, which I believe will come to be seen as a path-breaking development in the progress of musical education in our country.
	Let me also pay tribute to the other speakers in the debate and to their work in supporting music and music education at large—not least the Parliament Choir, whose concerts I have regularly attended with very great pleasure and the Royal Northern College of Music. The contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Moser, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh to the cause of music education are—I was going to say "legendary", but I would immediately add that the land of legend is the last place that I think either of them would wish to be consigned, and they remain as actively engaged as ever.
	This is a timely debate because this morning I was at the Abbey Road studios, where my noble friend Lady Morris launched the Music Manifesto in July 2004, to announce a £2 million investment for three Music Manifesto Pathfinder centres. These centres are based at The Sage Gateshead, the Roundhouse and the Hallé in Manchester. It was an inspirational occasion with performances by young people from all three institutions amid real excitement and enthusiasm for the Music Manifesto and the part that these three world-famous centres of excellence will play in taking it forward. The £2 million we announced this morning will support the three Pathfinders over the next two and a half years in trialling new partnerships between schools, cultural institutions, music services and the music industry. Each will be trialling new and different ways of delivering the aims of the Music Manifesto throughout its regions. The projects will benefit well over 100,000 children and young people, many in structured activities, which we have specifically agreed in advance, so that we will get the added value to which the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, referred.
	They will support the professional development of 500 music leaders and teachers, and will develop effective practice across music education, including individual tuition, early years, children at risk of social exclusion, singing pedagogy, student leadership, creative learning and the building of more effective partnerships between all those in their regions with a contribution to make, including the 370 signatories to the Music Manifesto, more than 140 of whom have pledged to make specific commitments.
	I take the opportunity to thank all three directors of the Pathfinder institutions: Anthony Sargent at the Sage; Marcus Davey at the Roundhouse; and Mark Elder at the Hallé for their commitment and all the hard work that they and their staff are putting in. I also reinforce the tributes that have been paid to Marc Jaffrey, the full-time champion of the Music Manifesto, who is in the act of path-breaking joined up government, employed directly by both DCMS and the DfES.
	I also announced today a three-part festival of practice in the new year to showcase future practice in music education in which all three Pathfinder institutions will participate.
	A big theme of this morning's launch was social justice. We are a great musical nation but too few of those from less advantaged backgrounds are part of that musical tradition. We need to tackle that, both as a matter of social justice and, as the right reverend Prelate so rightly said, because the music industry is a crucial source of employment and creativity for our country. Britain has more than 4,000 youth choirs and orchestras. We have more dedicated choir schools, sustained in large part by the churches, than any other European nation. Every year more than 300,000 people take graded music exams.
	Last year more than 63,000 four to 18 year-olds performed before young audiences totalling 37,000 music for youth festivals and school proms across the UK. We buy more CDs per person than any other nation. More albums are released here than by any other country except the USA. The music industry is worth £5 billion a year to the UK economy, yet, like my noble friend Lady Morris, I never cease to be depressed when visiting schools where insufficient music is taking place. Many primary schools have virtually no music integrated into the curriculum. We need to address that priority if the tradition of music that we want is to spread across the nation. We need to carry through the creative revolution, as referred to by my noble friend, that has already started.
	I shall answer as many of the points raised as I can. My noble friend Lord Harrison asked about the fitness for purpose of classrooms and other school spaces used for music. In 2003 my department issued Building Bulletin 93, The Acoustic Design of Schools", which covers this issue, and which I will send to my noble friend. It includes acoustic performance standards for all teaching and learning spaces in schools, including music accommodation. It specifies room acoustics and the sound insulation of the space from adjoining spaces and from external noise. Those requirements are not retrospective, but in a refurbishment scheme—large numbers of schools are being refurbished or rebuilt through the capital programme—the aim should be to improve the acoustic performance of schools to as near these levels as possible.
	My noble friend referred to the part played by local education authorities in the provision of music education, as did my noble friend Lady Morris. Local authorities continue to have an important role in music education, and we do not wish to diminish their role in sustaining and enhancing music in their localities. Since our introduction of the ring-fenced Music Standards Fund—the money is protected, to meet the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe—we have been funding music services to the tune of £59 million per annum, reversing their decline. Our survey of local authority music services in 2002 showed that approximately 450,000 children benefited each year from additional local authority music service provision, delivered by 10,700 musicians. That picture is reinforced by the number and quality of submissions for the 2005 National Music Council awards for music services. A great deal of excellent practice is once again being recognised and celebrated by these awards, and indeed the ceremony took place a few hours ago at the BPI building in Westminster.
	Concern was expressed by several noble Lords about the comparative levels of funding to local authorities for music. We have long acknowledged those concerns and I recognise the case of Worcestershire. We looked hard during the past two years at alternative ways of distributing the funds, but decided not to introduce any changes because we took the view that the disruption that that would cause to music services that are more highly funded would not be productive or justified. However, we recognise the needs of other areas.
	My noble friend spoke about music provision within extended schools. As part of the £840 million extended schools programme, which we announced recently, we have set out a core offer of extended services that we want all children to be able to access through schools. Part of that offer will be a menu of study/sport activities, including music tuition. Provision of music tuition in extended services will advance our pledge to provide all primary school children who want it with the opportunity to learn an instrument. My noble friend also referred to the Wider Opportunities pilots. In 2002, we embarked on those pilots in 13 areas, focused on instrumental tuition for seven to 11 year-olds. The Ofsted evaluation of those pilots showed that teaching and learning improved and that the number wanting to learn instruments rose significantly. Most significantly, that was the case where successful partnerships were formed in the way that my noble friend Lady Morris described between school-based staff, music service tutors, professional musicians and others.
	We have invested £4.5 million in grants to local authority music services to pilot their own models of delivery through the Wider Opportunities initiative. Through the Music Manifesto, we have set aside substantial additional funds to support instrumental music in primary schools, both next year and the year after. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State will make an announcement about how that will be allocated at the end of the month. My noble friend referred to the contribution that can be made by music professionals who do not have qualified teacher status. I readily acknowledge that.
	Earlier this year, we published a document entitled Routes into Teaching Music, which was developed as a joint venture between the DfES and the Esmée Fairburn Foundation. It is a guide for every kind of musician about how to train and work as a teacher of music, which is much more readily done after the workforce reform that enables a much wider group of people to play roles in schools and in classes in schools. Among other things, it covers the routes into the various jobs and teaching roles and the qualifications or experience needed for entry at each level. It also covers the opportunities to gain qualifications, accreditation and experience, including information about entry requirements, funding and timescale. I will circulate it to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate this evening.
	The noble Lord, Lord Moser, referred to the funding of other partners who play a crucial part in our musical life, not least the London orchestras, which I know are close to his heart and that of many others. The Government place the highest value on the world-renowned quality of British orchestral music and recognise the real concerns of the sector about national insurance, which the noble Lord raised. It is understandable that the ongoing uncertainty until that issue is resolved is unsettling for both the organisations and individuals concerned. Discussions are under way between the Department for Culture Media and Sport, the Revenue and Customs, the Arts Council England and the Association of British Orchestras. I hope that we can bring them to a conclusion as soon as possible.
	The issue of secondary provision was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. We have taken several steps to improve secondary provision in music. The specialist school programme is now making a significant contribution to music education. We now have more than 400 specialist performing arts colleges, 15 music colleges and five combined specialisms involving music. We have more than 200 advanced skills teachers in music and, specifically to address the recruitment difficulties in music mentioned by the noble Baroness, we are incentivising the recruitment of extra graduate music teachers next year with a new £2,500 golden hello for music graduates entering music training courses from next September.
	We also have the invaluable role of youth music, mentioned by my noble friend, Lady McIntosh. More than 1 million children have been composing, singing and playing instruments through youth music activities during the past five years, benefiting from £18 million of funding. In response to my noble friend's concern about funding, we are committed to sustaining that work. My noble friend Lord Harrison mentioned the audit of music education. We have published significant new information in the first annual report of the Music Manifesto. We will soon publish the latest audit of local authority music services, and I will ensure that that is circulated to noble Lords. I have run out of time. In conclusion, the ubiquitous Howard Goodall also performed this morning at the launch of the music manifesto pathfinder. He made a very moving speech about music as a force for social cohesion and a better and fairer society. He said:
	"Nothing brings people together, across social boundaries, more willingly, in larger numbers, for a more wholly positive experience, than the making of music".
	I believe that is a sentiment we all share and I commend it to the House.

The Earl of Northesk: The Minister might imagine that the underlying purpose of the amendment is destructive. I hope to offer her some reassurance by advising that my aim here is merely to probe a few issues. I am also grateful to other noble Lords who have been more imaginative than me in tabling amendments to constrain the terms of the individual categories of information.
	First, the registrable facts encapsulated in paragraphs (b) to (f) cannot be interpreted as identifiers of an individual's identity. Indeed, if we consider the drafting of Schedule 1(1), these categories are defined as "personal", rather than "identifying" information. This point was reinforced by the Select Committee on Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform and in its observation that registrable facts are,
	"not necessarily limited to information needed to prove identity . . . and extends to matters such as previous addresses, terms of residence in different parts of the UK and elsewhere and an 'audit trail' of disclosure of register entries".
	Of course, I acknowledge that these categories of data will be of benefit in terms of corroborating an individual's identity. Nevertheless, as I shall seek to demonstrate, the scope and range of the information required is wholly disproportionate. As I understand it, these categories of information comprise more data than that required to be given to the police for individuals placed on the Sexual and Violent Offender Register. By way of illustration, paragraphs (c) and (d) impose the requirement for the individual to record every address at which he or she has been resident and for how long,
	"in the United Kingdom or elsewhere".
	For the vast majority, this represents a huge amount of data. For example, will Members of Parliament have to update their information on the register on a weekly basis to indicate the periods that they have resided in London and the periods they have resided in their constituencies? More seriously, the provision appears to include periods of residence overseas, periods of residence of children, periods of residence at school or university, and so on. It has to be questionable whether we will all have the capacity to remember the precise details of where we have resided for every moment of our lives. That is a significant consideration, given that failure to provide the prescribed information could incur liability for a civil penalty.
	Additionally, given the drafting, individuals may be required to register residential circumstances such as extended treatment in hospitals and periods spent at clinics or refuges; for example, in respect of mental illness, that would involve hospice care for the terminally ill or safe houses for victims of domestic violence. Equally, individuals may be required to indicate periods of residence when serving sentences of imprisonment—something which would be, on the face of it, anti-pathetic to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. A requirement to register such information, irrespective of whether it is intrusive, not to say insensitive, could be said to contravene the Data Protection Act in respect of sensitive personal data.
	Despite protestations from the Government, subsection (6) is a very small fig leaf; after all, it bars the recording of sensitive personal data only in respect of subsection (5)(g). However, even if it were drafted to include residential data, as envisaged by Amendment No. 38, tabled in the names of my noble friends, I am uncertain that that would resolve the problem. As is so often the case with database management, omission of data, and what can be inferred from that omission, can be just as revealing and intrusive as their inclusion. Were incomplete records to be justified on data protection grounds then, by definition, where a gap in an individual's record of residence exists, that period would have to relate to sensitive personal data.
	In such circumstances, it would be a relatively simple matter, as a function of probability, to tie the period to a specific life event such as a prison sentence. The problem here is that an individual's whole life experience can be deduced merely by reference to where they have lived and for how long. The residential information, or its absence from the register, may not per se qualify as being sensitive, but what can be inferred from it most assuredly is. In effect, the Government's oft-repeated claim that no sensitive data, as defined by the Data Protection Act, will be held on the register would seem to be just so much window-dressing.
	Inevitably, all those difficulties also arise in respect of paragraph (b). Individuals will be required to record their current residential details irrespective of any element of sensitive personal data with which such information may be imbued. For example, is it really the Government's intention that terminally ill patients living out their days in a hospice will be required to record that fact in the register? There is also the problem of how it is anticipated that, for example, rough sleepers or Travellers will register their details. In effect, will "no fixed abode" be an adequate answer? There may also be potential problems with paragraphs (e) and (f). Asylum seekers who have fled persecution will be required in effect to make that fact plain in the register, thereby potentially exposing themselves to the risk of retribution.
	All in all, the construction of those categories of residential information is disproportionate to the purpose that they are intended to achieve. It sanctions pervasive capture of sensitive personal data for inclusion in the register in contravention of the Data Protection Act. I therefore look forward to the Minister's explanation of the logic on which the Government's drafting is based. I beg to move.

Lord Crickhowell: Last night my noble friend Lord Northesk rendered the Committee a service by enabling us to debate the subject of convenience. We return to that subject with this group of amendments but, as the noble Earl has indicated, there may be an even more important set of questions than that which simply concerns convenience.
	My noble friend was probably wrong when he said that all those who make applications for passports or apply to join the register would necessarily be required to provide all that information. The subsection that we are dealing with simply defines "registrable fact". However, Clause 5 enables the Secretary of State to prescribe what information should be provided and, as the Government have listed all those registrable facts, we must start by assuming that the Secretary of State may ask for all the information on the list.
	My second introductory comment is that not all the information described as a registrable fact must be entered on the register. Under Schedule 1, personal information that may be recorded in an individual's entry includes,
	"the address of his principal place of residence in the United Kingdom"
	and,
	"the address of every other place in the United Kingdom where he has a place of residence".
	But it does not refer to the past and the clauses on previous residences, to which I will refer. Last night, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, described himself as "a simple lawyer." I think some of us raised our eyebrows at this description. I am not a lawyer at all and when I first looked at the Bill, I assumed that "residence" was something which would be defined in such a way that lawyers would understand and would have a universal application that I could very quickly discover by enquiring at the Library. I went to the Library; they referred me to two works with which the noble Baroness will be very familiar: Curzon's Dictionary of Law and Stroud's Judicial Dictionary of Words and Phrases. I discovered that the situation is much more complicated than I had imagined. What a residence is depends very much on the situation and the particular Act of Parliament with which we are dealing.
	To take an obvious example, for the purposes of getting ourselves on the register of electors, the residence in question is where we happen to be on a particular night. It may include a tent or caravan, or wherever we are spending that night. I turned hopefully to Curzon to start the operation and discovered that a "residence" is a
	"place where a person abides, i.e., where he has his home".
	I was not sure that took me a great deal further, but below I discovered that an "habitual residence" was defined in R v Barnet LBC as,
	"a voluntary residence with a degree of settled purpose".
	The simple lawyer, like the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, will doubtless know exactly what that means, but the non-lawyer will not necessarily be much the wiser.
	Then I got into Stroud and the whole thing became even more complicated. Under the definition "reside, residence, resident," I read that,
	"a condition to a gift of a house that the donee takes actual possession of it, 'as and for his residence and place of abode', and continue during his life to reside therein, does not imply that the donee must continue personally to reside in the house; he will satisfy the condition by keeping up the house as a place of residence in which he and (or?) some of the members of his family occasionally dwell."
	I do not think that is the intention of the present Bill.
	Then we have the situation of the Army officer who had a place of residence that was deemed not actually to be a residence, because he had let it and was living in Germany while serving in the Army. I think we need to know exactly what the Government's intentions are.
	Let us take the example of many Members of this House. My noble friend Lord Northesk has already touched upon this in respect of Members of Parliament. Many of us have two homes, one of which may be in the country, and another that we live in when in London in order to attend this House. In my case I have a house in the country and my wife has a house in London where I live when attending this House. I met a noble Lord at dinner whose wife is Spanish. He tells me that she has two houses in Spain and he has two in this country.
	In addition, some people may have a holiday home in, say, France and all those may be defined as residences. To complicate issues, I recall that when I was a Minister, a Minister's principal home was deemed to be in London. Fortunately, when we come to this place and start claiming our parliamentary expenses, our principal home may prove to be in the country.
	Furthermore, many students live at home with their families and spend some time at university. We need to know what requirements may be imposed on them. My Amendment No. 24 limits the requirement to name your principal residence in the United Kingdom. My noble friends Lady Anelay and Lady Seccombe and I have tabled a string of amendments attempting to restrict the definition either by saying that you have to live there for three months; that students do not have to register their place at university unless they have been there for three months; and so on. My noble friend Lord Northesk raised a whole string of examples which I had not thought of; for example, hospitals, hospices and prisons. All of them fall within the definition. Before we go much further, we must have a clear definition of the Government's intention in this respect.
	I turn to the second set of issues that we must consider. I notice a requirement that we should go back, presumably to the age of 16, to record all the places we have lived in. We must not only record those places but remember the dates when we arrived and left. It is a pretty extraordinary demand. I cast my mind back to 1953 when I was a National Service officer. I suppose that for part of that year my residence was in Jamaica. Perhaps the visits that I paid to British Guiana and Bermuda and a spell on two of Her Majesty's ships were not long enough to qualify as residential. But then I went to Germany where I was probably in residence. Having finished my service, I returned to live at my parents' home in Chiswick and then I went up to Cambridge University for a spell. I am not clear from the Bill whether I am required to record not only all those places but the time when I was there. I hope that in reply the Minister will say that of course it is not the Government's intention that we should have to do such unreasonable things. However, as the Bill stands, that could be the position. I think we are entitled to know what the Government's intentions are on this matter.
	That takes me to one further point. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Gould, is not with us today. Yes, he is here! The noble Lord, Lord Gould, tells us that this is a hugely popular measure, as does the Minister. I have been reading carefully the document I was urged to read during yesterday's debate. Page 33 of the document issued by the Home Office states:
	"This exercise demonstrates the importance of making it very clear to citizens what conditions they are judging the scheme on before they are asked to agree or disagree to the scheme".
	The document makes it very clear that their attention was drawn to the possible costs of the scheme. We know from our earlier debates that estimates of those costs are completely misleading and almost worthless, but, none the less, a number of cost options were drawn to their attention. Also drawn to their attention was the fact that they might have to go to places to register and that it might take up to an hour. No reference was made to the fact that they were going to have to record all the places where they had lived at any time in their lives since the age of 16. I am taking 16 as the age because that is the age at which people are going to come into the scheme as it stands. Once they understand that they are going to be asked for this information, that they will be liable to quite severe penalties if they fail to provide it accurately, and that its accuracy can be checked, they may not be quite so much in favour of the scheme as they were previously.
	So at this stage, when we are taking only an early look at the detail of the scheme, it is important that the Government clarify their intentions. If we are going to have a scheme, I think that we all want it to be reasonably practical and easy to operate. One of our amendments suggests that the record of residence should not have to go back more than six years. That would at least ease the problem of looking back into the far distant past which I have identified. If we were to restrict the clause further so that we would not have to list anywhere where we did not spend three months in every year, it would simplify matters a good deal. There may be other ways in which we can make this a more practical and sensible measure.
	Is it really necessary to divulge to Her Majesty's Government every possible bolt-hole that we may have in any part of the world where we may want to go for a few weeks of peace and quiet? Of course I understand that they must have, and be pretty confident about, a principal residence where we can be pinned down and where people can, if not find us, at least convey requests and information to us by whatever method is chosen by government. But to ask us to identify every single possible place where we may put our heads for a few nights and which falls within a definition of residence is totally unreasonable. It will cause the scheme to be probably unworkable and certainly unpopular. In the hope and expectation that the Government have worked out a much more sensible arrangement and are—dare I say it?—going to reveal it to an astonished Committee tonight, I support my noble friend's amendment and hope that we get a positive response.

Lord Crickhowell: I want to make one point but, before I do so, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, that we are not really discussing in this series of amendments whether or not he can get certain information about where someone happens to be living at present or even where his grandfather was on a particular night on which the census was held. In fact, the information in the census does not tell him any more than where an individual was on a particular night. We are talking about the requirement of all sorts of people, who are nothing like as clever as the noble Lord and who do not have the computer equipment that the noble Lord has, to provide accurate information that changes very frequently. I believe I am right in saying that about 60 per cent of the population of London change their address every year.
	So this is a question of the burdens that are being placed on people. Last night the noble Lord described this as the poll tax Bill, and I took him up on that. But if it is unpopular and if people find that the burden is unreasonable, that is not his object and it is not my object either. We are trying to make this a reasonably practical and workable scheme, and I was greatly encouraged by the response of the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, who was clearly trying to give us that assurance.
	I have one further thought on the matter. Having heard what the noble Baroness said, and having heard what was said about regulations, I think that we will have to consider whether we should write into the Bill at least some of the restrictions on time and duration and so on which she said are likely to be introduced in the regulations so that there is some constraint on government. I mean, we may have to go back 30 or 40 years as the Bill is drafted. The Minister has indicated that probably the Government will not want us to go back, except in very exceptional cases, more than six years. She has already indicated that probably the three-month residence qualification is likely to be the sort of thing that would be included in regulation.
	We need to consider before the next stage, and having read very carefully what the Minister has to say, is whether some upper limits should be placed in the Bill so that the Government are constrained in the drafting of their regulation. As has been said, we all know the difficulties about dealing with regulation. Parliament is very reluctant to give totally unconstrained and unlimited powers in Acts of Parliament that enable governments to do things by regulation. So while I very much welcome what the Minister has said—it was positive and she has responded to almost all the anxieties I raised—I think that we need to consider whether there still should be some outer limits placed on government which make the provision very much tighter than it is.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 37, 38 and 59.
	I realise that the hour is getting late, and I shall be brief to the point of perhaps being too brief. Amendments Nos. 36, 37 and 39 probe why the register should be used to store personal numbers and what exactly those numbers are intended to be. I raise this because there is no guidance in the explanatory notes. There may be some innocent answer but we have not yet been given guidance.
	I have to test the Committee's patience somewhat on Amendment No. 38 because it approaches a matter that could not be debated in another place. It relates to an amendment that the Government tabled very late in proceedings on Report, and because of the guillotine there was no opportunity for the Minister to explain the amendment.
	Considering the lateness of the hour, I wonder whether it would be convenient if I simply read into the record my questions and invite the Minister to write to me and all noble Lords present, and to place the letter in the Library so that we can consider our proceedings further on Report. If there is no objection from around the Committee, I shall proceed to do that.
	Subsection (6) was inserted by the Government on Report in another place. The Minister's only comment on 18 October at col. 741 was:
	"We do not have time to consider Government amendment No. 1, but I refer my hon. and learned Friend to it because it will give him the reassurance that he wants. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) raised the legitimate point in Committee that clause 1(5)(g) suggested that personal sensitive data could be covered by the Bill, such as those on the police national computer. We have thus tabled Government amendment No. 1 to rule out the use of sensitive personal data, as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998, with which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr Marshall-Andrews) will be familiar".—[Official Report, Commons, 18/10/05; col. 741.]
	Similarly at Third Reading the Home Secretary pursued the same form of reassurance. The Government stated that they tabled the amendment specifically to restrict the database from containing sensitive personal data.
	My difficulty is that I have received briefing from concerned members of the public to say that the problem is that the real effect of the amendment, which is limited to Clause 1(5) (g), is to achieve the exact opposite of that intended by the Government. It is to permit the processing of sensitive personal data in the database. I must then demonstrate why I believe that the government amendment limited to Clause 1(5)(g) would have that opposite effect.
	The answer is as follows. The ID card database content is specified in Schedule 1. There are about 50 data classes that could be stored in a central register. Those registrable facts fall within nine categories specified in Clause 1(5)(a) to (i). I shall not bore the Committee by reading them out; they are in the Bill. The technical amendment now forming Clause 1(6) tabled by the Home Secretary states that the registrable facts falling within paragraph (g) above,
	"do not include any sensitive personal data (within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998, (c.29)) or anything the disclosure of which would tend to reveal such data".
	By inference, that limitation automatically implies that paragraphs (a) to (i), except (g), could include sensitive personal data. So the amendment must be considered in conjunction with powers in the Bill to amend the database. Clause 3(5) states that the Secretary of State may, by order, modify the information for the time being set out in Schedule 1—which contains the ID card database. Thus, there are powers in the Bill to add sensitive personal data, such as criminal records and medical records, to items (a) to (i), except (g), to the register later.
	In other words, if the Government deem it relevant to hold criminal or health records in the database—for example, in connection with the purpose of securing the efficient and effective provision of public services in Clause 1(4) (e), primary legislation is not needed. That would be at odds with the statement of the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, to the Third Report of the House Of Lords Constitution Committee at Appendix 3. She wrote:
	"Personal information not relevant for identification purposes and so not consistent with the statutory purposes (such as tax information, medical records and criminal records) cannot therefore be held on the Register without the Government passing fresh primary legislation".
	My amendment was tabled to ensure that the stated intention of the Government is carried into effect. It would achieve the objective set out by Mr Burnham and Mr Clarke in another place on Report and Third Reading and by the noble Baroness in her letter to the Select Committee on the Constitution. That is especially relevant in the light of questions raised earlier today on another amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about the activities of the Inland Revenue.
	I stress that I do not doubt the Government's good intention by their amendment to exclude sensitive personal information. My concern is that, because there was not adequate time to debate an amendment that was welcomed on all sides, there may be an unintended consequence. With that, although I shall beg to move the amendment, I anticipate shortly formally to beg to withdraw it, in the anticipation that, in the mean time, before Report, the noble Baroness will write to me and other Members of the Committee. I beg to move.